


I Am Not Afraid to Keep on Living

by jennandblitz



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Zombie Apocalypse, Banter, Blood and Gore, Blood and Injury, Existentialism, Getting Together, Gore, M/M, Mentions of Pregnancy, Minor Character Death, Non-Explicit Sex, Past Character Death, RS Fireside Tales, Strangers to Lovers, Surgery, Zombie Apocalypse, Zombies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-18
Updated: 2020-02-18
Packaged: 2021-02-27 13:14:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,595
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22227697
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jennandblitz/pseuds/jennandblitz
Summary: A defunct shopping mall!Totally abandoned,Yet still frozen in time,Bright white lights shining,Artificial turquoise fountains spewing out clear water,Eerie eighties elevator music drifting by…— Rebecca McNuttThe zombie apocalypse happened slowly. Pockets of humanity cling onto life, in various safe houses dotted through ravaged countryside.Safe for how long, though?
Relationships: Sirius Black/Remus Lupin
Comments: 22
Kudos: 82
Collections: RS Fireside Tales Vol.2





	I Am Not Afraid to Keep on Living

**Author's Note:**

> Written for RS Fireside Tales 2020. 
> 
> This fic is a vague homage to one of the first fanfictions I read many, many years ago. It was a bandom fic, set in a shopping mall during the zombie apocalypse, and it stayed with me in lots of ways. So, enjoy this existential dive into some horrible near-future. 
> 
> Thank you to my wonderful betas and to the Fireside mods for all their wonderful, spooky hard work!

The zombie apocalypse happened slowly.

There was no overnight explosion of a mysterious disease, the trappings and infrastructures of the first world countries falling down around their ears. It started off so slowly that modern societies blamed everything on something or another. The rabid attack of a man at the side of the road was written off as drugs; the ripping apart of a group of teenagers in a graveyard was blamed on rabid animals. Empty graves were blamed on the uprising of strange, end-of-the-world cults. The sighting of bizarre creatures blamed on too long staring at television shows, too wild an imagination from the youth of the day. Day by day, for _years_ , humanity shrugged off every warning sign.

Scientists were working behind the scenes on cures, on strange bacteria and viral infections they began to see cropping up in autopsies, in biopsies, in routine things that began to seem stranger and stranger. It was all brushed under the rug, of course; the whispers that began to circulate in scientific circles, then through governments, through conspiracy circles. It didn’t become common knowledge for a long time. The human brain has an uncanny knack for filling in the unexplainable with platitudes. The zombie apocalypse was not on anyone’s list of things to deal with.

Life had to carry on.

Right up until it didn’t.

The world begins to slow just a little; countries shutting their borders to outside trade, then immigration, then flights, visitors, any contact at all. Countries walled themselves in to protect from those diseases they didn’t understand, the bacteria and viruses that were crawling through the population; unknown origins but spreading, spreading. People at the borders, fleeing one country for another, where the news reports say things are _safer_ , are turned away. Then closer, and closer, like the microcosm and the macrocosm. Public transport shuts down within the countries; anything for long distance travel. Things were shrinking and shrinking, the trains, the buses.

In the UK, the first roadway to be destroyed by the masses is the M6. It happens in a breath, it feels like, barricades erected at those major intersections to try and stop the spread of people even further. It starts in the motorways, through those major ley lines and _arteries_ of the country. The M25 happens next, as everyone in London floods outwards, running, trying to stay _alive_.

The Disease, as it’s talked about in nebulous terms on news reports, over the radio, has a fluctuating incubation period. Some Shells, a term coined to try and reaffirm that the _things_ inhabiting friends and family now are _not_ those beloved people, can be dead for months before they crawl their way out of their graves and decide they’re _hungry_. Some can be dead for moments, sitting up after a car crash with one leg missing and crawling to the person sprawled on the road beside them, _hungry_.

Eventually, the number of Shells start to outweigh the number of people; real, meaningful people, with goals and feelings and not just a _hunger_. Towns become pocket resistances, gathering in places that are the most well defended, or well stocked. These pockets become smaller and smaller, more and more remote in a bid to protect themselves from the onslaught of Shells; the relentless, never-ending wave of bodies strung up by diseased puppet strings.

There’s a shopping mall set in the side of the hills, on the edges of a distant town. It was meant to be a whole complex, with restaurants, bars, shops, a sprawling beacon, but only the main shopping mall was built before the world started to turn. The trees around it are still verdant and green, overgrowing and wild. The doors stay tightly shut though—they have been for months.

Solar power means the place is still running; the lights still shining from the abandoned stores within. The gaudy fountain in the centre of the building, a supposed meeting place with art and benches and places for pop-up markets surrounding it, still runs and floods with water. They’re never sure whether it’s drinking water, but they don’t have a choice. Occasionally, the building, in the height of summer, gets enough power for the sound system to start back up, and awful instrumental versions of pop songs will hum over the stale air. When the power starts dying again the music slows and whines like a music box running out of steam, creaking into eerie stillness.

It’s summer now, Sirius thinks, tilting his face up towards the sun as he sits on top of the air conditioning unit; the rumble of its solar powered innards pleasantly reassuring against his thighs. After a moment, he slips his boots off and wiggles his toe through the burgeoning hole in his socks—his _good_ socks.

The blue sky seems completely opposed to the chaos reigning beneath it. The car park beneath still has a few cars abandoned within, doors flung open, rifled through for supplies in the moments before the Shells catch up to that plucky adventurer. The Shells shamble and stumble in groups. They’re slow most of the time, ambling without any real purpose. When they catch a scent, though, or hear footsteps or screams, they’re fast. Nothing preternatural, just something playing at human, running as if it has been starving for months. They have, in all likelihood. But they are slow now, under the high sun. Sirius barely hears their moans and groans, now just a constant soundtrack and backdrop to life. He has a feeling that if they were to suddenly stop, Sirius would struggle to sleep without the guttural groaning that seems to permeate every corner of the mall.

Sirius comes up here often, to watch. He says he’s scouting, really, keeping an eye on things, watching for any movement in the distance that might come with a flutter of hope beating the inside of his ribcage; an end to this all, a way out. He’s not scouting, though. He comes up to watch the blueness of the sky roil past, watch the juxtaposition of its serenity with the moaning crowd gathering below. He comes up here to look down on it all and wonder what life means now. He’s not so sure there’s a purpose beyond _survive_ , and whether that’s a purpose at all.

Down the stairs back into the mall, Sirius’ friends and family will be sitting around in little huddles, finding ways to while away the hours. Lily is going to give birth any moment now, they’re all sure. Dorcas was halfway through nursing school before the university shut down, so she’s their best chance at surviving. They’ve been stockpiling supplies for months, since they realised Lily was pregnant. Regulus has a broken ankle from climbing into a compound to try and steal food and medical supplies. He jumped the fence running from the Shells and Sirius had to double back to drag him away from them. Sometimes, when he closes his eyes, Sirius still sees Regulus on the floor, scrambling away from a handful of half-rotting corpses determined to make him one of them.

He thinks he almost sees it now, when the groans of the Shells beneath start rising in pitch and volume, sounding more like snarls. They buzz like locusts in an oncoming plague, a cacophony of noise. Sirius is up like a shot, to the edge of the rooftop where a half-wall sits. His fingers dig into the masonry as he looks out. He sees the source of the disturbance easily. Even if he didn’t spot the figure in the deep green parka coat, he would’ve been able to follow the Shells gravitating towards him like pebbles caught in the orbit of a star. The figure—he can’t see anything else about it—cuts along the side of the brick wall that skirts the edges of the parking lot. Their footfalls must be clear as day to the Shells because they start running towards him, shoving each other aside like some horrific parody of the Black Friday sales Sirius remembers from his teenage years. Sirius doesn’t know this person, he’s sure. Everyone he knows is either downstairs in the mall or dead; long dead.

Still, that’s not how surviving the zombie apocalypse works. They have to save everyone they can. Sirius grabs a large rock just on the top of the wall. In the early days, they would stand here with the paintball gun Marlene had—poorly modified—and the rifle James got from his parent’s house on the way through here (they don’t talk about that, though; not the scene of bloody devastation in the kitchen). Now, they have no ammunition of any kind left; The rifle cartridges are down to a handful—James insists he’ll use those if he needs to save his _family_ (Lily, the baby, Sirius), but that’s it—and Marlene’s paintball gun has been smashed to pieces caving in the skull of a Shell who got a hold of Benjy a few months back. It didn’t help.

“James!” Sirius calls back over his shoulder and immediately hears both the responding scratching of the Shells trying to climb the wall towards his voice, and a shout from beneath. “Fabian? Caradoc! Incoming!”

The figure along the wall looks up at the shout—Sirius thinks he would be the same if he heard a voice he didn’t recognise—and starts towards him. Sirius watches them for a moment before flinging the rock to the other side of the parking lot. It makes a dull _thonck_ sort of noise—hopefully through a fucking skull—and the sea of Shells shifts and pivots towards the noise. Sirius runs to the far corner, furthest away from the wall where the figure is running, running, running.

A Shell claws at the stranger’s leg and they stumble a little but keep pace. Sirius’ heart is in his throat. He can’t see someone else ripped apart, not even a stranger.

“‘Round the back!” He calls, his hands cupped around his mouth. “Green employee door behind two blockades. Ginger bloke will be there to let you in!”

Sirius isn’t sure if the figure hears him, but he seizes another rock, and another, throwing them against the furthest wall to try and draw away the Shells. A few of them peel off to follow the figure in the parka, but Sirius can’t let himself think about what might happen just out of view.

He doesn’t _hear_ any screams.

Sirius throws half the rocks they have up here—soon they’ll have to start throwing stock from the stores, because who needs £1000 mobile phones anymore when every infrastructure they’ve known has been razed to the ground?—and breathes in and out three times when he starts to see the Shells disperse again. He almost doesn’t want to turn around; doesn’t want to go and peer over the side nearest the employee door and see gore splattered across their barricades. He can’t see more death; he’s seen enough for a thousand lifetimes. So he stays, looking out and watching the clouds drift past; the soundtrack of groans is almost soothing.

“Sirius.” Gideon’s voice comes from the fire escape and he turns to see the man leaning there with the door half open. He doesn’t _look_ as if he’s just heard the screams of a man torn to shreds. Off of Sirius’ raised eyebrow, Gideon tips his head towards the stairs. “Newcomer made it. Asked about the guy on the roof.”

“They alright?” Sirius asks as he starts across the roof, pulling on his boots on the way. “They were running like the fucking wind past them.”

“He’s alive. Beat up. Dorcas is gonna try and fix him up,” Gideon continues, stepping aside to let Sirius past before following him down the narrow metal stairs. “Been out there for a few days, so he says.”

“Where’d he come from?”

“I dunno, mate. You’d have to ask him. Not in the habit of grilling people within an inch of death on their family tree.” Gideon skirts ahead of him and pulls open the door back into the main hub of the mall, giving Sirius a dry look over his shoulder.

The mall lights are blue and fluorescent, always bright and sharp after being out in the dullness for so long. Sirius squints just a little as he follows Gideon. The furniture shop doors lie wide open and Sirius can see Mary within sitting on the edge of a bed with her scarf pulled tight around her shoulders.

The technology shop lies untouched; all those £1000 phones not needed nowadays. The jewellery stores are the same, priceless diamonds lying uselessly amongst smashed glass cases. The clothes shops have been rifled through. Everything useful is in their packs or piled to the sides; almost everything jersey or cotton has been used at some point as bandages or tourniquets. Clothes get changed when they’re too ripped, too blood soaked.

The toy stores lie empty. A while back, Gideon and Fabian’s nephews were here but they left with their mother and father, to try and find somewhere else try and find something _more_. Sirius remembers the two boys playing in the toy store, pulling open the boxes full of building blocks or toy cars, unaware of anything other than the fact they had a whole store at their disposal. Sirius doesn’t think too long on them, just a second and no more; they will be either in some unmarked mass grave, or shambling around as Shells.

All the sections of the food court have been stripped bare, some of the tables pushed together for a generic meeting place, all the food down to those dried staples, rice, instant noodles, meat they don’t want to think on the origins of for too long. In the kitchen of one fast food restaurant the stainless steel tables are pushed together, and the stranger from outside is leaning back on his elbows. His face is blood-smeared and his jeans are pushed up on one leg. Dorcas is at his feet with her small first aid kit sitting next to his feet.

“Hi Sirius,” she mutters, not looking up from the ever-thinning supplies within the battered little box. Marlene sits on the table behind her, her blonde hair in a tight braid down her back (it gets tied up when they venture out, else the Shells grab it).

Sirius nods, looking from Dorcas—lip between her teeth, concentrating on cleaning up a bloody set of scratch marks on the stranger’s leg—to the stranger himself. His hair is somewhere between a rich brown and matted blonde, as if it might have been curly once upon a time, but pollution and dirt and ill care have made it just a sad straggle of hair. There is a smear of blood across his jaw but it looks muddy. That same mud-and-blood is beneath his fingernails, and his eyes are a startling deep green beneath fair eyelashes.

“Hi,” he says in a deep voice, those green eyes sharp and querying as he looks between the two women and Sirius.

“This is Remus,” Marlene replies, gesturing towards him. “Came through from the town.”

Sirius nods, staring at that smear of blood across his jaw. “Alright, Remus.”

“Thank you, for the distraction.” Remus props himself up on his hands, looking at Sirius earnestly. His eyes are such a deep green.

“It’s no trouble.” Sirius draws closer and leans on the edge of the counter.

Perhaps it’s because sex isn’t a top priority in the zombie apocalypse, living with the same group of people day in, day out, but Sirius’ stomach twists warmly at the sight of him and his beautiful deep voice and his deep eyes. “Dorcas’ll get you fixed up right,” he continues, tipping his head towards where Dorcas gives him an indulgent smile.

“I will,” she says. “This’ll hurt, Remus. Gotta sterilise this.”

“What happened?” Sirius continues, attempting to distract the man from the reddened, almost infected, gouges on his leg. “Looks nasty.”

“Yeah, Shells. Just glad they didn’t bite me, right?” Remus’ mouth quirks in a little smile and Sirius wants to bite it with kisses and passion; trace his tongue over pinkened, sensitive skin.

“Right,” Marlene says, crossing her arms over her chest. “James and I already checked him over, made sure there’s no bites.”

Remus’ smile stays as wry as ever, pain not flickering over his face despite the way Dorcas is sterilising those wounds. “Yep, I’m clean.”

“Good to know,” Sirius replies, leaning his hip against the table Remus is lying on. Perhaps it comes across a little molten, a little warm and bordering on flirtatious. Remus smiles back with a little crooked canine tooth, just as warm, almost _heated_. Sirius watches as his cheeks turn a beautiful pink flush, almost embarrassed at what Sirius tentatively names chemistry and _attraction_ between them. Sirius wants to taste that blush, raze his teeth across it; surprised by the sweetness curling in his stomach.

Dorcas raises her head from cleaning out the wounds on Remus’ leg. “A’right, if you two could stop flirting, I need your help, Sirius. Marlene is shit at this.”

Sirius rolls his eyes, giving Remus a little half-apologetic glance as he moves down to where Dorcas is sitting. He purposefully ignores the teasing note in Dorcas’ voice; he’s _allowed_ to flirt with the interesting new stranger, especially one he’s just helped rescue.

Marlene chuckles and tucks her legs up to sit criss-crossed on the counter. “Shit at blood and all that bull. I’m just here for moral support, from a distance.”

A little frown flits over Remus’ brow as he tilts his head to observe Dorcas. “What’s wrong?”

“You’re fine. I just need to stitch this cut up, is all.” Dorcas pats Remus on the opposite calf, almost absently as she rifles through her first aid kit with her other hand. It looks woefully empty and Sirius swallows down the little bit of worry germinating in his ribcage. He thinks of Lily and the baby, how they’ll need all the supplies they can get for her. “C’mere, Sirius.”

Sirius nods, falling into the role easily. He holds the thread for Dorcas, helps press the sides of that cut together so she can pull the flesh taut either side. It’s not fun work, to be sure, but it has to be done, like so many things in this new world they are learning to inhabit. Remus winces with every pass of the needle and when Sirius has a free hand—blood-streaked—he presses it against Remus’ leg, reaches up to squeeze his wrist in silent solidarity. Sirius is pretty sure Dorcas and Marlene pretend not to notice but, frankly, he doesn’t care; it’s been so long since he’s had saccharine sweetness lacing through his bloodstream like this.

When they’re done, Dorcas and Sirius wash their hands in the sink Marlene sits next to. The water there is old and dirty, but it’s only for cleaning up in instances like this. Thankfully the mall had some kind of new-fangled filtration system along with its solar panels, and Sirius thanks the architects with lofty, ecological goals from years past. It’s probably the only reason they’re still alive—the solar panels, the filtered water, the well-barred doors. They chat quietly as they do, and Marlene interrupts Dorcas with a light smack to her shoulder. She nods beyond to where Remus is dozing, his chin tipped back, still half-propped on one elbow. He’s exhausted, that much is clear, and Sirius wonders how long he’s been running for, what he was running _from_.

“Let him sleep,” Sirius says as Marlene stifles a sad little smile. She’s thinking the same thing, he’d wager. What the hell is going on out there?

Dorcas and Marlene follow Sirius out of the kitchen, pulling the door shut behind them. James and Lily are by the fountain in the centre of the mall. Lily sits on a bench with a blanket thrown over the back, her feet propped up. James sits on the floor in front of her, and her hand is idly stroking through his matted black hair. It’s combing, perhaps, but sweet and soft, pulling through the knots with gentle fingers. They had a brush, somewhere, but it got used to help bar a door, help hold a rope taut, got sharpened down for a shiv because zombie apocalypse movies are a lie, and not everyone has guns or machetes or can knock a Shell’s head clean off with a baseball bat.

“Hey. Seen the newcomer?” James greets him with a lazy wave, his head tipped in towards Lily’s touch.

“Yeah, he’s sleeping off Dorcas’ treatment in the fast food kitchen,” Sirius says through a sigh, sitting on the edge of the bench Lily is lying on. He puts a hand on her ankle and squeezes softly, rubbing over the sore muscles.

“Looked bone-fucking-tired.” Lily glances towards the food court. It’s quiet for a moment, but for the rushing turquoise water of the fountain. It’s summer, so perhaps the sound system will start up soon and give them all a fright.

“Yeah.”

They’re all bone-tired, aren’t they? What are they doing from here? Are they just living, just existing, _being_? Killing time until the doors of the mall finally give in and the Shells pour in like sand from a broken hourglass? He and James stay up and talk on the roof sometimes, thinking about what life means now, when purpose is just to survive. Lately, though, his best friend has been hard to tear away from his wife, and Sirius understands that. Lily has been so tired recently, so James spends so much of his time sitting with her as she dozes, listening to the tiny heartbeat fluttering in her belly. Sirius tips his head to the side and watches them. Survive; that’s all they can do.

“I’m gonna go up to the roof. Maybe some others are following in his footsteps…” Sirius stands again, with a small squeeze to Lily’s ankle.

“Alright,” James breathes, his grey eyes looking right at Sirius. James knows he’s lying. He doesn’t go up there to keep watch, although it’s a happy accident he can do that, too. Sirius goes up there to think, to contemplate, to muse on the state of the fucking world with those moans and groans as a constant backdrop.

Sirius always gets a strange urge to hug both James and Lily tightly, say goodbye every time he leaves the room, because he’ll never know when it _will_ be goodbye. They’ve made a pact not to, though; no goodbyes between them. So he just gives a half-wave as he starts towards the escalators. They’re still, of course, so he takes them two at a time in long strides. At the top, Regulus is sitting with Mary, his leg propped up on a box from a nearby store. They can’t cast his ankle here, but it’s splinted with some pieces of wood, tightly wrapped with the ripped up pieces of some organic cotton, responsibly sourced and dyed t-shirt that probably cost far more than is reasonable back when the economy existed.

“Alright?” Sirius says as he crests the top of the escalators and steps off towards his brother.

“Hey Sirius,” Regulus calls back, his arm around Mary’s shoulders. “Yeah. How’s the newcomer?”

Sirius shrugs, because really, he doesn’t know. All he knows right now is the sweetness nestling in the pit of his stomach when he thinks back to Remus; to the smattering of freckles across his nose, his slightly crooked canine, the blush that had alighted the top of his cheeks. “Sleeping. How’s your ankle?”

Mary smiles and shoots him a look. “He’s walking on it too much, keeps insisting it’s fine when he needs to rest.”

Regulus rolls his eyes and ruffles Mary’s dirty blonde bob. “Shush, you snitch.”

“Thank you, Mary—” Sirius crosses to them and leans against the plant pot next to them; the plant within is plastic, so it’s still here when all the real plants have died— “for your honesty. You need to rest, Reg.”

“I know, I know. When we have accomplished our long list of things to do and cured the Disease and set up some kind of communal living village for us all to live out the rest of our miserable lives, then I’ll sit the fuck down.” Regulus’ eyes are bright with mirth despite the tiredness ringing them.

“Alright, dick.” Sirius shoves his shoulder, chuckling. “I’m going up to the roof. Shout if you need me.”

Regulus nods, settling back on the bench with Mary. Words seem surplus a lot of the time here, and Sirius doesn’t mind the quiet. Even through the walls, the sounds of the Shells are constant, so it’s never _silent_. The concrete steps are well worn in the centres as Sirius climbs back up to the roof, propping the door open with a shoe they’ve kept there. It’s a Manolo Blahnik pump, probably lusted after at some point in the past, but now it’s a doorstop.

The Shells have dispersed back to their little groups, shambling across the parking lot, aimless and endless. The sound is louder up here, and occasionally there’s a twitter of birdsong, haunting and echoing. In the mall they can almost pretend life goes on, as if this is some epic sleepover; in their mid-twenties and huddled up with sleeping bags, watching the stars through the mildew-grime of the glass roof. Life is paused in there, with the solar power and those eighties jingles, with the trickling of the water fountain and the stores open within, ghostly. Out here on the roof, the truth is unavoidable. The world as they know it is gone; this is not a sleepover, this is life, this is survival, this is _living_.

Sirius sighs, toes off his boots—the hole in his sock has gotten worse in the past few hours—and sits on the top of the air conditioning unit again. The sky is a murky smog. It should be clear, Sirius thinks, because the cars aren’t running, or the power plants, or any of those aspects of humanity that were ruining this planet. It’s not, though; it’s still murky, grey, as if they—humanity, people, whoever is left—actually contributed some kind of goodness to the world. Now it’s just Shells and a handful of survivors. Sirius’ thoughts about the world crumbling are as murky as the sky. He’d always joked with those in college about how humanity is the herpes of the solar system, and everyone is avoiding Earth for that damn infection. How funny, then, that humanity might be the only thing they can rely on now.

Another weary sigh escapes Sirius’ chapped lips as he sits back, crosses his ankles, stretches his arms above his shoulders for a handful of breaths before sitting back against the brick. The sun is starting to go down through the smog, and twilight always brings a strange activity on the expanse of concrete beneath the mall.

 _Crepuscular_ is one of Sirius’ favourite words. He doesn’t even know where he’d heard it first, but Shells are crepuscular—more active in the twilight. The groans rise in a crescendo and it’s only around now that they sound even slightly human, they sound like starving men. Sometimes it’s too much to bear and Sirius goes inside and shuts the fire escape behind him, but tonight, he sits with those half-human sounds, with them draped across his shoulders like a blanket. He does not think on whether he knows any of the bodies those Shells inhabit because that is the path to madness, but he thinks on humanity, on _people_ , on death.

His eyes close at some point, tired of looking at murk and smoke but, at the sound of the fire escape door creaking, they snap open again, glancing back towards it.

“Err—hi.” Remus’ voice is sleep-soft and rough as he stands in the doorway, his shoulders a little sloped.

“Hey. Feel better?” Sirius scrapes his dirty hair back from his face, shakes his hand to dislodge a tangle from between his fingers.

Remus nods, draws closer and lets the door swing almost shut against that expensive doorstop. “Yeah, much better after a solid few hours sleep.” _Had it been that long?_ Sirius glances out to the sky, twilight staining orange halos around the clouds. Hours crawl by like years here, seconds take centuries.

When he looks back to the other man, he’s closer, stood next to the air conditioner with his hands in ragged pockets, his green eyes following Sirius’ gaze. “Mind some company?”

Sirius shakes his head and shifts over to make some room for Remus. He’s more slight than Sirius, to be sure, lithe and all gangly without being tall, somehow. Sirius is tall, and Remus somehow looks tall from a distance until he draws close and they are stood together, where he’s an inch or so shorter. “Not at all,” he says, his gaze sweeping over Remus’ face. Is that a blush or just the twilight colouring?

At that, Remus sits on the edge of the unit, his narrow hips pressing back into the metal. “It’s kinda nice up here, isn’t it?”

“If you don’t count the Shells that occasionally try and climb the wall, sure,” Sirius mutters, giving him a wry smile as they settle shoulder-to-shoulder; there’s no room for personal space or privacy in a place like this.

Remus chuckles and tips his head back against the brick. His profile almost _glimmers_ in the low light, a straight nose, a little upturned at the end, endless freckles like constellations, the swell of a lower lip, the bob of his throat as he swallows around a deep, sweet laugh. “That’s very true. The glass is half-full, hm?”

Sirius turns a little to look at him, an eyebrow raised. “Really? It’s the apocalypse and the glass is _half-full?_ ”

“Gotta find the goodness where you can, nihilist,” Remus retorts with his own wry smile, one corner of his mouth twisted to show a dimple. “The sun is setting, the sky is beautiful, we’re still alive.”

There’s a pause for a moment as Sirius drags his gaze across the skyline. “Yeah,” he mutters, rubbing his hand over his mouth. “That’s true.”

Remus tucks one foot up against his body, the length of his lean thigh against his chest so he can rest his chin on his knee. He doesn’t say anything—words are as scarce as food, it seems—but his gentle breathing eventually settles with Sirius’ in companionable syncopation.

“You ever just think about…” Sirius starts, swallows around the threads of his voice, a little tangled and shorn, “about what the fuck we’re meant to do with life now?”

Remus looks at him, his profile backlit, just at an angle like some marble statue in a desolate museum. “All the fucking time.”

Sirius nods, rubs his hand over his mouth again—he needs to go check his water supply, but they’re sort of used to dehydration here, used to rationing—and looks out to the skyline. “Yeah… Like—is this it? Is this just what we do now?”

“I could spout something about higher purpose, you know? Something about altruism, the greater good, the continuation of the world.” Remus’ voice is dry with wit as he tips his chin up, head back against the brick. Sirius watches him in his periphery, smiling. “But I think that’s bullshit. I think we’re all alive because we’re too scared of dying, and we’re either too delusionally optimistic, or too chicken to do anything about it.”

“Ha… fucking Christ. That’s a take, isn’t it, Mr. Glass Half Full.”

Remus chuckles. Sirius feels it reverberate from where their upper arms are pressed together in such close quarters. “For what it’s worth, I’m the delusionally optimistic kind of person.” Remus pauses, bites his lip and his smile quirks sideways to that dimple again. “Willing to bet you’re the too chicken kind?”

“If this is you flirting, you’re doing a shit job; calling me a pussy because I don’t wanna die,” Sirius snaps back, but his smile is molten and warm to match the warmth in his stomach; that gentle tugging behind his belly button that reminds him attraction and pleasure and _sex_ can still exist in this hellhole.

“It’s fucking valid,” Remus replies. He doesn’t comment on the flirting though, but Sirius can see the colour on his cheeks isn’t twilight anymore but the pleasant flush of warm skin. He wonders if that attraction is simmering under Remus’ skin too.

The groans of the Shells beneath them grow louder for a moment in lieu of conversation. It’s getting a little colder, the night drawing in, but Remus is warm against Sirius’ arm. He sighs again, drags his gaze along that skyline as if he’s waiting for it to implode, to roil forth like lava and drag them all under. But he’s sat next to a delusional optimist who thinks the sky is beautiful tonight, and he looks beautiful too.

“It’s the end of the fucking world, isn’t it?”

Remus meets his gaze, closer now in the quiet of the night that’s tightening around them like a blanket. His green eyes flicker over Sirius’ face, linger on his mouth, trace the shape of the ragged v-neck t-shirt hanging from his shoulder; Sirius can feel his gaze like the warmth of midsummer sun. “Yeah,” Remus whispers in reply, leaning closer. “It is.”

Sirius leans in at the same time Remus does, and his fingers tangle into dirty brown hair to pull him closer, closer, closer. Their lips meet in a soft pass of pink, unblemished flesh. Remus’ hands skitter tentatively up Sirius’ arms, over his ragged shirt, sinking into the skin. Sirius breathes deep; a sharp gush of air through his nose with the scent of earth and the warmth of skin and the _heat_ of attraction.He nips tentatively at Remus’ lower lip, a gentle, questing little sink of his teeth. Remus responds with a soft little noise, pulls back just a little to speak.

“Hi,” he whispers, his bottom lip flushed red with the imprint of Sirius’ teeth.

“Sorry,” Sirius retorts, and doesn’t mean any of it.

Remus’ smile blooms. Even when he’s grinning, he only has one dimple. Sirius has to concentrate on not leaning in to kiss it. “No, you’re not.”

“Nah.”

“I’m not either.”

“Good.”

Remus swallows, his green eyes flickering all over his face, then leans in and kisses Sirius again, a little huff of a laugh winnowing from his lips. It tastes wonderful, and Sirius leans in, nips again like a question because he wants to bite and taste in the safety of this moment; biting with no Disease, no Shells, no slavering maws, just soft lips and puffs of breath. Remus groans, tips his chin back. Sirius takes that as a sign, trails his mouth down Remus’ jaw.

“Can I?” Sirius whispers, setting the sharpness of his teeth against the angle of Remus’ jaw. Biting is taboo, of course, in a place where bites mean death; mean an endless, terrifying, groaning existence as something inhabits your body, _hungry_. But he wants to bite, wants to taste Remus’ creamy skin, the warmth of it: heat, affection, beauty, lust.

“Yes,” Remus breathes into the soft space behind Sirius’ ear. His fingers dig crescents into Sirius’ shoulders as he hauls him closer. “Yes.”

Sirius does, then; he scrapes his teeth over the juncture between Remus’ neck and shoulder, that delicious angle. Remus gives a lovely hiss in response as Sirius coils his tongue over the blooming redness, then again nips, tastes, sucks softly. Sirius hums, feeling as if he’s zinging with energy, coaxed back from some kind of half-life by the warm body next to his. Remus turns to press his nose into Sirius’ hair and Sirius gets some vague remembrance of cigarette smoke. Tobacco has been rarer than bullets since the power got switched off, but Sirius remembers it, vaguely, as if he might taste it on Remus’ skin, as if they had been sharing a cigarette, star-gazing on the roof of a car.

“Fuck,” Remus breathes again, shorn and sharp. “God…”

“Yeah?” Sirius smiles, pulls back enough to see the deepness of Remus’ eyes.

Remus’ mouth quirks again. Sirius doesn’t stop himself leaning in to kiss the dimple that appears this time. “Yeah. Now… Now I want to taste you.”

Sirius’ eyebrow hikes just for a moment, then Remus slips from the unit to his knees, between Sirius’ legs. He winces as the weight shifts to his mangled ankle and Sirius’ hand goes to his shoulder to check if he’s okay. Remus just quirks a little smile—that dimple again—and palms his way up Sirius’ thighs. Sirius can’t resist shifting just a little, so his thumb can stroke over that damn dimple again and he huffs a little chuckle, lifting his hips so Remus can undo his jeans. Sirius stops listening to the cacophony below, listens instead to the thud of his own heart, and Remus’ sinking into the pauses between his.

They fall asleep on the rooftop, half-clothed, tangled with each other in the fresh closeness that orgasms come with. The temperature drops though, and Sirius wakes shivering and drags his clothes back on. The moans are a little quieter in the depth of the night but Sirius shakes Remus awake and urges him downstairs, half-asleep and clammy-cold.

Sirius helps him down the stairs when his weight buckles on the top step beneath the shoddy supports of his injured leg. Sirius’ arm fits snugly around his waist and he stoops to hold the other man up as they take the steps carefully. He hopes that Remus’ leg won’t get infected, hopes partially because they need all the medical supplies they can get, for Lily, for the baby, and partly because he feels a flickering of something more than sex brewing in his chest. Perhaps, this might feel even a little like salvation; perhaps it can be more than warming each other’s cold and quiet bones in the wake of the apocalypse. Or perhaps Remus’ leg will turn that sickly green that makes Dorcas hide a brief moment of fear and Sirius will watch death, again.

On solid ground, Sirius holds his hand to guide him through the mall and to the furniture store where they all tend to sleep; curtains and partitions strung up at the notion of privacy. Some people are still awake, but Sirius pulls Remus through to his bunk of sorts, the one in the back corner, near the staff room.

Sirius shivers as he draws the curtains around his bunk, hauling Remus in with him. His fine teeth are chattering as Sirius sits on the bed and pulls him in, sitting thigh to thigh. They are both cold as Sirius hauls the blanket over them. It’s threadbare and moth eaten, but it’s warming, slowly. Another blanket from the end of the bed and Sirius drags Remus back to lie down under them, pressing their shivering bodies together for warmth.

There’s no need for words as they warm up—they’ve not spoken since a half-panted check-in, still shuddering with the aftershocks of pleasure—but Sirius drags his fingers through Remus’ hair and brushes it back from his forehead. His eyes are closed already. Sirius closes his, thinks about sleep, thinks about the end of the _fucking world_.


End file.
